1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus capable of communicating with an external apparatus via a network to acquire destination information from the external apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an image processing apparatus such as a multi-function peripheral can transfer received image data to another apparatus. To automatically transfer the received image data, it is necessary to previously register a transfer setting including a transfer condition for determining whether the received image data is to be transferred, and destination information indicating a transfer destination. Registering the transfer setting enables the image data to be automatically transferred using the destination information contained in the transfer setting when the image processing apparatus receives the image data satisfying the transfer condition.
Various types of transmission protocols such as facsimile (FAX), E-mail, a file transfer protocol (FTP), and a server message block (SMB) are available to transfer image data. The transfer destination of the image data is specified using the destination information corresponding to each transmission protocol. For example, when the image data is transferred using a facsimile, a telephone number is used as the destination information and when the image data is transferred via E-mail, an E-mail address is used as the destination information.
Instead of directly registering the destination information such as a telephone number and an E-mail address in the transfer setting, a method for registering an identification (ID) corresponding to destination information registered in an address book as the transfer setting has been known. In this case, when an image processing apparatus receives image data satisfying a transfer condition, it acquires destination information corresponding to the ID contained in the transfer setting from the address book and then transfers the image data.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-077472 discusses a method for, when the destination information registered in the address book is deleted, invalidating the transfer setting containing ID corresponding to the deleted destination information. Consequently, this can prevent waste processing of attempting to acquire destination information corresponding to the ID each time when the image data satisfying the transfer condition is received when the destination information has been already deleted from the address book.
Recently, instead of referring to the address book in the image processing apparatus, the image processing apparatus can refer to an address book in an external apparatus which can communicate with via a network and acquire destination information from the external apparatus, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-077472. In this case, because a plurality of the image processing apparatuses can refer to the address book of an external apparatus, labor and time required for an administrator to update the address book can be reduced.
However, if a configuration for acquiring the destination information from the external apparatus is adopted, there is a possibility that an operator cannot know that the destination information stored in the external apparatus has been deleted immediately and thus the destination information is left as it is in a state in which its transfer setting is valid even after the destination information has been deleted. Additionally, if the image processing apparatus is configured to equally invalidate all the transfer settings when the image processing apparatus cannot acquire the destination information, all the transfer settings might be invalidated, even if the destination information cannot be acquired due to a temporary communication error, such as a network failure and server busy status, and acquisition of the destination information is restored after a time passes.